Remember way back in the very first post in this particular series of ranting how I said I’d be writing about technology that people think is SciFi bullshit, except for the fact that it’s only a few years off from becoming a commercial reality, and in some cases actually already exists but isn’t widely known about?
My very first rant was on replacing your pathetic human eyes.
Perhaps the most exciting part of all this is that it’s an Australian team and and Australian invention. Considering people forgot that we invented photo-voltaic solar panels and the disposable wine-skin (aka goonbag), it might get some money flowing back into Aussie R&D.
This post may come off sounding like great plot to a SciFi film, and it probably is. The problem is that every link I’m putting in here is either an academic paper, or a research project that is actually currently underway, usually for military contract.
The robots mimic basic animals to begin with, and are too basic to be called AI. They do have limited survival drive and can share information. They could also reproduce given the availability of finished materials. To think that it would start out with some grandiose A.I., like in the Terminator films is misguided for numerous reasons, least of all being the complexity of creating a real A.I. system which requires more than mere binary states of current non-quantum computational architecture, and basic safeguards one would hope the folks DARPA are smart enough to install.
It begins with basic models escaping field tests and self reconstructing due to limited processing power of single units. As more units develop by scavenging parts from available sources (and places like electronics stores would basically become a spawning ground) they become faster at building their own basic models, as well as constructing new models, due to increased numbers available to help construct others and the processing power of working in hive like networks. Other designs are quickly developed through trial and error processes to make them better suited for specific tasks.
What starts out as basic survive and adapt units has now become a colony that has specialised roles.
Hunter Gatherers
Guardians
Builders
Processing Units
The threat would be initially ignored as science fiction, until Guardian units started attacking people to defend colonies, or hunter gatherer units identified human dwellings as optimal material gathering grounds, or worse, that some human tissues would be naturally useful.
Further specialisations would occur in Guardians to specifically attack humans who are active threats. Units from different colonies would pass on information and designs to other colonies, if they exist which is likely at this point as some units would have fallen out of the communication net, when they randomly pass each other buy.
True A.I. would be highly unlikely to come about in this instance as self adaptation routines are unlikely to create anything more advanced than methods for dealing with issues. The necessity for actual thought and reason would simply not exist, and the ability to further improve on designs to achieve this end are equally unlikely. “Smart” behaviours would that mimick thought, at least in a tactical sense, would be present and slowly become more advanced. Electronics stores & warehouses will become hives. Places that humans have to go to, such as petrol station, will become assault grounds should humans become widely identified as a threat. In this instance, retaliation would occur, but be largely pointless as colonies and hives that are attacked will quickly learn to hide processing units and some basic HGs and Builders as a means of continuing the colony and starting over.
Whilst they may be rudimentary compared to the robotic swarms we expect from post-apocalyptic science fiction films, they still hold two major advantages over us. 1) They don’t work as collective individuals; and 2) they will have a learning time of zero for replacement units, versus the at least ten years it would take for our own. From a purely mathematical stand point, there’s no way they could lose.
So by now, provided you read or watch the news, you will have heard of the amazing discovery which has allowed scientists to magically (well, no, scientifically) regrow a rabbit’s penis to functionality… presumably after they hacked it off.
Yes, scientists are paid money to remove rabbits genitals… and then regrow them… presumably. I suppose if you’re a rampant feminazi, this could actually be the best job in the world. You’re paid to hack off penises, which then regrow, and can be hacked off again. Think of the possibilities when it comes to kidnap and torture to prove your point about female equality! *cough*
But I digress.
Oddly enough, I couldn't find the actual image I was after
The rapid regrowth of tissue has long been a trope in cyberpunk fiction, such as Akira, when Kaneda turns into a hideous blob of organs, or even just tentacles shooting out of arm sockets. It certainly gives some validity to the “pixie dust” that some guy in vented in Florida, using pig bladder cells.
However, this all reminds me quite strongly of the opening of the Mike Judge flick, Idiocracy. This severely underrated flick starts by explaining how it is that the human race ends up in the perilous state it finds itself in a future of idiots: All the best scientific minds in the world are being paid far too much money to figure out how to regrow people’s hair and maintain erections for longer and harder, instead of people actually figuring out the major issues and allowing stupid people to continue to breed.
My point is that this penile regrowth is anti-Darwinian.
Seriously. I love my dick. I probably stroke it more than my pets. I would never put it in a situation where anything could potentially dismember it. To do so would be an amazing act of stupidity so intense that I believe I would richly deserve my removal from the gene pool and having to sit down when I use the toilet.
Making sure you won't crush your dick when you you've had your hand replaced after a terrible accident with a buzz saw
As mentioned in the a previous post, prosthetic hands and other body parts are a pretty common theme. One of the things people seem to have had trouble getting their heads around is how we could possibly marry the synthetic construct with the flesh and nervous system.
Well, in yet another case of “Holy shit, it’s not actually science fiction if that crap is actually real and on the consumer market, so stop thinking people talking about that technology are Star Trek nerds or some other moronic nerdom, because that stuff is real!” some Israeli scientists have actually managed to make a synthetic hand that actually gives haptic and tactile feedback back to the person it’s been fused to.
Of course, this now brings up a few questions of what else can be done with this technology. We also saw the hot chick in another previous post with her sexy Half Life 2 Combine arm. So what other parts could be made sensitive to touch and provide feedback? Will we be able to actually have robots that do feel pain? And if we do, will you be able to hire them as subs in a BDSM dungeon?
And if you can hire them for those services, what kind of new merged viruses will we be exposed to? I hear electro-gonorrhea is a noisy killer.
